Man as Symphony of the Creative Word

Schmidt Number: S-5471

On-line since: 12th July, 2002

LECTURE VIII

3rd November, 1923

Yesterday I spoke to you about the other side of nature-existence,
about those super-sensible and invisible beings which accompany the
beings and processes visible to the senses. An earlier, instinctive
vision beheld these beings of the super-sensible world as clearly as we
behold the world of the senses. Today, these beings have withdrawn
from human view. It is only because this company of gnomes, undines,
sylphs and fire-beings is not perceptible in the same way as animals,
plants and so on, only to this is it due that man, in the present
epoch of his earth-evolution, is not in a position to unfold his
soul-spiritual being without the help of his physical and etheric
bodies. In the present situation of earth evolution man is obliged to
depend upon the etheric body when making use of his soul, and upon the
physical body when making use of his spirit. The physical body, which
provides the instrument for the spirit, the sense-apparatus, is not
adapted to entering into connection with the beings which exist behind
the physical world. It is the same with the etheric body, which man
must use to develop his soul-being. Through this, if I may put it so,
half of his earthly environment escapes him. He passes over everything
connected with these elemental beings about which I spoke yesterday.
To this world the etheric and physical bodies have no access. We gain
an idea of what actually escapes the man of today when we realize what
such gnomes, undines, and so on, actually are.

We have, you see, a whole host of lower creatures — lower at the
present time — those beings which consist only of a soft mass,
which live in the fluid element, and have nothing in the way of an
articulated skeleton to give them inner support.

They are creatures which belong to the latest phase of
earth-development; creatures which only now, when the earth has
already evolved, develop what man — the oldest earth-being —
already developed in his head-structure during the time of ancient
Saturn. These creatures have not progressed so far as to form within
themselves that hardening of the substance which can become the
supporting skeleton.

It is the gnomes which, in a spiritual way, make good in the world
what the lower orders of the animals up to the amphibians lack. This
applies also to the fishes, which have only indications of the
skeleton. These lower animal orders only become complete, as it were,
through the fact that gnomes exist.

And just because the conditions of the beings in the world are very
different, something arises between these lower creatures and the
gnomes which I yesterday called antipathy. The gnomes do not wish to
become like these lower creatures. They are continually on the watch
to protect themselves from assuming their form. As I described to you,
the gnomes are extraordinarily clever, intelligent beings. With them
intelligence is already implicit in perception; they are in every
respect the antithesis of the lower animal world. And whereas they
have the significance for plant-growth which I described yesterday, in
the case of the lower animal world they actually provide its
completion. They supply what this lower animal world does not possess.
This lower animal world has a dull consciousness; the gnomes have a
consciousness of the utmost clarity. The lower creatures have no bony
skeleton, no bony support; the gnomes bind together what works as the
force of gravity and make their bodies from this volatile, invisible
force, bodies which are, moreover, in constant danger of
disintegrating, of losing their substance. The gnomes must ever and
again create themselves anew out of gravity, because they continually
stand in danger of losing their substance. Because of this, in order
to retain their own existence, the gnomes are constantly attentive to
what is going on around them. As far as earth-observation goes no
being is more attentive than a gnome. It takes note of everything, for
it must know everything, grasp everything, in order to preserve its
life. A gnome must always be wide awake; if it were to become sleepy,
as men often do, this sleepiness would immediately cause its death.

There is a German saying of very early origin which aptly expresses
this characteristic of the gnomes, in having always to remain
attentive. People say: Pay heed like a goblin. And goblins are in fact
the gnomes. So, if one wishes to make someone attentive, one says to
him: Pay heed like a gnome. A gnome is really an attentive being. If
one could place a gnome as an object lesson on a front desk in every
school classroom, where all could see it, it would be a splendid
example for the children to imitate.

The gnomes have yet another characteristic. They are filled with an
absolutely unconquerable lust for independence. They trouble
themselves little about one another and give their attention only to
the world of their own surroundings. One gnome takes little interest
in another. But everything else in this world around them, in which
they live, this interests them exceedingly.

Now I told you that the human body forms a hindrance to our perceiving
such folk as these. The moment this hindrance is removed, these beings
are there, just as are the other beings of nature for ordinary vision.
Anyone who comes so far as to experience in full consciousness his
dreams on falling asleep is well acquainted with these gnomes. You
need only recall what I recently published in the
“Goetheanum” on the subject of dreams. I said that a dream
in no way appears to ordinary consciousness in its true form, but
wears a mask. Such a mask is worn by the dream when we fall asleep. We
do not immediately escape from the experience of our ordinary day
consciousness. Reminiscences well up, memory-pictures from life; we
perceive symbols, sense-pictures of the inner organs — the heart
as a stove, the lungs as wings — all in symbolic form. These are
masks. If someone were to see a dream unmasked, if he were actually to
pass into the world of sleep without the beings existing there being
masked, then, at the moment of falling asleep, he would behold a whole
host of goblins coming towards him.

In ordinary consciousness man is protected from seeing these things
unprepared, for they would terrify him. The form in which they would
appear would actually be copy images of all those qualities in the man
which work as forces of destruction. He would perceive all the
destructive forces within him, all that continually destroys. These
gnomes, if perceived unprepared, would be nothing but symbols of
death. Man would be terribly alarmed by them, if in ordinary
consciousness he knew nothing about them, and was now confronted by
them on falling asleep. He would feel entombed by them — for this
is how it would appear — entombed by them over yonder in the
astral world. For it is a kind of entombment by the gnomes which, seen
from the other side, takes place on falling asleep.

This holds good only for the moment of falling asleep. A further
complement to the physical sense-world is supplied by the undines, the
water-beings, which continually transform themselves, and which live
in connection with the water just as the gnomes live in connection
with the earth. These undines — we have learned to know the role
they play in plant-growth — also exist as complementary beings to
those animals which stand at a somewhat higher stage, which have
assumed a more differentiated earthly body. These animals, which have
developed into the more evolved fishes, or also into the more evolved
amphibians, require scales, require some sort of hard external shell.
The forces needed to provide certain creatures with this outer
support, this outer skeleton — for these forces the world is
indebted to the activity of the undines. The gnomes support
spiritually those creatures which are at a quite low stage. Those
creatures which must be supported externally, which must be clad in a
kind of armour, they owe their protective sheath to the activity of
the undines. Thus it is the undines which impart to these somewhat
higher animals in a primitive way what we have in the covering of our
skull. They make them, as it were, into heads. All these beings which
are invisibly present behind the visible world have their great task
in the economy of existence. You will always notice that, where
materialistic science wishes to explain something of the kind I have
just developed, there it breaks down. It is not in a position, for
instance, to explain how the lower creatures manage to propel
themselves forward in an element which is scarcely harder than they
are themselves, because it does not know about the presence of this
spiritual support from the gnomes which I have just described.
Equally, the formation of an armour-like sheath will always create a
difficulty for purely materialistic science, because it does not know
that the undines, in their sensitivity to, their avoidance of their
own tendency to become lower animals, thrust off from themselves what
then appears upon the somewhat higher animals as scales or some other
armour-like covering.

Again, in the case of these beings, it is only the body which hinders
the ordinary consciousness of today from seeing them just as, for
example, it sees the leaves of plants, or the higher animals.

When, however, man falls into a state of deep, dreamless sleep, and
yet his sleep is not dreamless, because through the gift of
inspiration it has become transparent, then his spiritual gaze
perceives the undines rising up out of that astral sea in which, on
falling asleep, he was engulfed, submerged by the gnomes. In deep
sleep the undines become visible. Sleep extinguishes ordinary
consciousness, but the sleep which is illumined by clear consciousness
has as its content the wonderful world of ever-changing fluidity, a
fluidity which lends itself in every possible way to the metamorphoses
of the undines. Just as for day consciousness we have around us beings
with firm contours, a clear night consciousness would present to us
these ever-changing beings, which themselves well upwards and sink
down again like the waves of the sea. All deep sleep in the
environment of man is filled with a moving sea of living beings, a
moving sea of undines.

Matters are otherwise with the sylphs. They, too, provide a completing
element to the being of certain animals, but now in the other
direction. The gnomes and undines add what is of the nature of the
head to those animals where this is lacking. Birds, however, as I
described to you, are actually pure head; they are entirely
head-organization. The sylphs add to the birds in a spiritual way what
they lack as the bodily complement of their head-organization. They
complement the bird-kingdom in regard to what corresponds to the
metabolic limb-system in man. If the birds fly about in the air with
under-developed legs, so much the more powerfully developed is the
limb-system of the sylphs. They may be said to represent in the air,
in a spiritual way, what the cow represents below in physical matter.
This is why I could say yesterday that it is in connection with the
birds that the sylphs have their ego, have what connects them with the
earth. Man acquires his ego on the earth. What connects the sylphs
with the earth, that is the bird-kingdom. The sylphs are indebted to
the bird-kingdom for their ego, or at least for the consciousness of
their ego.

Now when someone has slept through the night, has had around him the
astral sea, consisting as it does of the most manifold undine-forms,
and then wakes up with an awakening dream, then again, if this dream
on awakening were not masked in reminiscences of life or
sense-pictures of the organs, if he were to see the unmasked dream, he
would be confronted by the world of the sylphs. But these sylphs would
assume for him a remarkable form; they would appear much as the sun
might if it wished to send to men something which would affect them
adversely, something which would lull them spiritually to sleep. We
shall hear shortly why this is the case. Nevertheless, if someone were
to perceive his dream on awakening unmasked, he would see in it an
inflowing, an actual inflowing of light. He would also experience this
as unpleasant, because the limb-system of these sylphs would, as it
were, spin and weave around him. He would feel as though the light
were attacking him from all sides, as if the light were something
overwhelming, something to which he was extraordinarily sensitive.
Here and there, perhaps, he might also feel this as a caress of the
light. But in all these things I only wish to indicate to you how the
light, with its upholding, gently touching quality, actually appears
in the sylph-form.

And when we come to the fire-beings, we find that they provide the
completing element to the fleeting nature of the butterflies. A
butterfly itself develops as little as possible of its actual physical
body; it lets this be as tenuous as possible. It is, on the contrary,
a creature of light. The fire-spirits appear as beings which
complement the butterfly's body, so that we can get the following
impression. If, on the one hand, we had a physical butterfly before
us, and pictured it greatly enlarged, and on the other side a
fire-being — they are, it is true, rarely together, except in the
circumstances which I mentioned to you yesterday — then, if these
two were welded together, we would get something resembling a winged
man, actually a winged man. We need only increase the size of the
butterfly, and adapt the size of the fire-spirit to human proportions,
and from this we would get something like a winged man.

This shows you again how the fire-spirits are in fact the complement
to those creatures which are nearest to what is spiritual; they
complement them, so to say, in a downward direction. Gnomes and
undines complement in an upward direction, towards the head; sylphs
and fire-beings complement the birds and butterflies in a downwards
direction. Thus the fire-beings must be brought together with the
butterflies.

Now in the same way that man can, as it were, penetrate through the
sleeping-dream, so can he also penetrate through waking-day life. But
here he makes use of his physical body in quite a robust way. This,
too, I have described in articles in the “Goetheanum”. Here
also man is totally unable to perceive how, in his waking life, he
could continually see the fire-beings, in that the fire-beings are
inwardly related to his thoughts, to everything which proceeds from
the head-organization. But when a man has progressed so far that he
can remain completely in waking consciousness, but nevertheless stand
in a certain sense outside himself, viewing himself from outside as a
thinking being, while standing firmly on the earth, then he will
become aware how the fire-beings form that element in the world which,
when we perceive it, makes our thoughts perceptible from the other
side.

Thus the perceiving of the fire-beings can enable man to see
himself as thinker, not merely to be the thinker and, as such,
call up the thoughts, but actually to behold how the thoughts run
their course. Only then do the thoughts cease to be bound to the human
being; then they reveal themselves as world-thoughts; they work
and weave as impulses in the world. Then one notices that the human
head only calls forth the illusion that thoughts are enclosed inside
the skull. There they are only reflected; their mirrored images are
there. What underlies these thoughts belongs to the sphere of the
fire-beings, one sees in these thoughts not only the thoughts
themselves, but the thought-content of the world, which, at the same
time, is actually an imaginative content. This is the force which
enables us to arrive at the realization that thoughts are
world-thoughts.

I venture to add: When we behold what is to be seen upon the earth,
not from the human bodily nature, but from the sphere of the
fire-beings — that is, from the Saturn-nature which has been
carried into the Earth — then we gain exactly the picture of the
evolution of the earth which I have described in
“Occult Science — an Outline”.
This book is actually so composed that the thoughts appear as the
thought-content of the world, seen from the perspective of the
fire-beings.

You see, these things have in themselves a deep and real significance.
But they also have a deep and real significance for man. Take the
gnomes and undines: they are, so to say, in the world which borders on
human consciousness; they are already beyond the threshold. Ordinary
consciousness is protected from seeing these beings, for the fact is
that these beings are not all benevolent. The benevolent beings are,
for instance, those which I described yesterday as working in the most
varied ways upon plant-growth. But these beings are not all
well-disposed. And in the moment when man breaks through into the
world wherein they live and are active, he finds there not only the
well-disposed beings but the malevolent ones as well. And so one must
first form a conception as to which of them are well-disposed and
which of them malevolent. This is not so easy, as you will see from
the way I must describe the malevolent ones. The main difference
between the ill-disposed beings and the well-disposed is that the
latter are always drawn more to the plant and mineral kingdoms,
whereas the ill-disposed are drawn to the animal and human kingdoms.
Some, which are even more malevolent, also desire to approach the
kingdoms of the plants and the minerals. But one can gain quite a fair
idea of the malevolence which the beings of this realm can have, when
one turns to those which are drawn to human beings and animals,
wishing in particular to consummate in man what is allotted by the
higher hierarchies to the well-disposed beings for the plant and
mineral world.

You see, there exist ill-disposed beings from the realm of the gnomes
and undines, which make for human beings and animals and bring it
about that what they should really impart only to the lower animals
appears physically in human beings. Certainly, these things are
already present in man, but their aim is that this element should be
manifested physically in human beings as well as in animals. Through
the presence of these malevolent gnomes and undine-beings, animal and
plant life of a low order — parasites — exist in human
beings as well as in animals. These malevolent beings are the
begetters of parasites. The moment man crosses the threshold of the
spiritual world, he at once meets the subtleties of this world. Snares
are everywhere, and he must first learn something from the goblins
— namely, to be attentive. The spiritualists can never manage
this! Everywhere there are snares. Now someone might say: Why then are
these malevolent gnome and undine-beings there, if they engender
parasites? Well, if they were not there, man would never be able to
develop within himself the force to evolve the structure of his brain.
And here we meet something of extraordinary significance.

I will sketch this for you in a diagram. If you think of the human
being as consisting of the metabolic-limb-man, of the breast-man, that
is, the rhythmic system, and then of the head-man, that is the system
of nerves and senses, there are certain things about which you must be
quite clear. Here below processes are taking place — let us leave
out the rhythmic man — and here above processes are again taking
place. If you look at the processes taking place below as a whole, you
find that in ordinary life their essential function is usually
disregarded. These processes are those of excretion — through the
intestines, through the kidneys, and so on — all of them having
their outlet in a downwards direction. They are mostly regarded simply
as excretory processes. But this is a misinterpretation. Excretion
does not take place merely for the purpose of elimination, but to the
same degree in which the products of excretion appear, something
appears spiritually in the lower man which resembles what the brain is
physically above. What occurs in the lower man is a process which is
arrested halfway in regard to its physical development. Excretion
takes place because the process passes over into the spiritual. In the
upper man the process is completed. What below is only spiritual,
there assumes physical form. Above we have the physical brain, below a
spiritual brain. And if what is eliminated below were to be subjected
to a further process, if the changes in its condition were to be
continued, then its final metamorphosis would be preliminary to the
human brain.

The human brain-mass is the further evolved product of excretion. This
is something which is of immense importance, in regard to medicine for
instance, and it is something of which doctors in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries were still fully aware. Of course today people
speak in a very derogatory manner — and rightly in many respects
— of the old “quack-apothecaries”. But this is because
they do not know that their potions still contained
“mummies” of the spirit.

Naturally this is not intended as a glorification of what has figured
as “quackery” in the past centuries, but I am drawing
attention to many truths which have connections as deep as those which
I have just cited.

It is a fact that the brain is a higher metamorphosis of the products
of excretion. Hence the connection between brain illnesses and
intestinal illnesses, and their cure.

You see, because gnomes and undines exist, because there is a real
world in which they live, the forces are present, which, proceeding
from the lower man, do indeed give rise to parasites, but yet, at the
same time, bring about in the upper man the metamorphosis of the
products of excretion into the brain. It would be absolutely
impossible for us to have a brain, if the world were not so ordered
that gnomes and undines can exist.

What holds good for gnomes and undines in regard to the destructive
forces — for destruction, disintegration, also proceed in their
turn from the brain — this holds good for sylphs and fire-beings,
in regard to the constructive forces. Here again the well-disposed
sylphs and fire-beings hold themselves aloof from men and animals, and
busy themselves with plant-growth in the way I have described; but
there are also those which are malevolent. These ill-disposed beings
are above all concerned in carrying what should only have its place up
above in the regions of air and warmth down into the watery and earthy
regions.

Now if you wish to study what happens when these sylph-beings carry
what belongs up above down into the watery and earthy regions, look at
the belladonna. The belladonna is the plant, which, if I may put it
so, has been kissed in its blossoms by the sylphs, and in it what
could be beneficent juices have been changed into juices which are
poisonous.

Here you have what may be called a displacement of spheres. It is
right when the sylphs develop their enveloping forces up above, as I
have already described, where the light touches the surface in a
formative way — for the bird-world needs this. But if the sylph
descends, and makes use below of what it should employ up above in the
plant-world, a potent vegetable poison is engendered. Parasitic beings
arise through gnomes and undines; through sylphs the poisons which are
in fact a heavenly element which has streamed down too deeply on to
the earth. When men or certain animals eat the belladonna, which looks
like a cherry, except that it conceals itself in the calyx (in the
very way it is pressed down you can see what I have just described)
— when men or certain animals eat the belladonna, it is fatal to
them. But just look at the thrushes and blackbirds; they perch on the
belladonna and get from it the best food in the world. It is to their
region that what is present in the belladonna belongs.

It is a remarkable thing that animals and man, who in their lower
organs are in fact earth-bound, should experience as poison what has
become corrupted on the earth in the belladonna, whereas birds such as
thrushes and blackbirds, which should really get this in a spiritual
way from the sylphs — and indeed through the benevolent sylphs do
so obtain it — should be able to assimilate it, even when what
belongs up above in their region has been carried downwards to the
earth. They find nourishment in what is poison for beings more bound
to the earth.

Thus you get a conception of how, on the one side, through gnomes and
undines what is of a parasitic nature strives upwards from the earth
towards other beings, and of how the poisons filter downwards from
above.

When, on the other hand, the fire-beings imbue themselves with those
impulses which belong in the region of the butterflies, and are of
great use to them in their development — when the fire-beings
carry those impulses down into the fruits, there arises within the
species of the almonds, for instance — what appears as the
poisonous almonds. This poison is carried into the fruit of the almond
trees through the activity of the fire-beings. And yet the fruit of
the almond could not come into existence at all if beings from this
same world of the fire-beings did not in a beneficial way burn up, as
it were, what is the edible part in other fruits. Only look at the
almond. With other fruits you have the white core in the centre and
around it the flesh of the fruit. With the almond you have the kernel
there in the centre, and around it the flesh of the fruit is quite
burnt up. That is the action of the fire-beings. And if this activity
miscarries, if what the fire-beings are bringing about is not confined
to the brown burnt-up shell, where it can still be beneficial, but
something of what should be engaged in developing the almond-shell
penetrates into the white kernel, then the almond becomes poisonous.

And so you have gained a picture of those beings which are just on the
boundary of the world lying immediately beyond the threshold, and of
how, if they carry their impulses to their final issue, they become
the bearers of parasites, of poisons, and therewith of illnesses. Now
it becomes clear how far man in health raises himself above the forces
that take hold of him in illness. For illness springs from the
malevolence of these beings who are necessary for the upbuilding of
the whole structure of nature, but also for its fading and decay.

These are the things which, arising from instinctive clairvoyance,
underlie such intuitions as those of the Indian Brahma, Vishnu and
Shiva. Brahma represented the active Being in world-spheres which may
legitimately approach man. Vishnu represented those world-spheres
which may only approach man in so far as what has been built up must
again be broken down, in so far as it must be continually transformed.
Shiva represented everything connected with the forces of destruction.
And in the earlier stages of the flower of Indian civilization it was
said that Brahma is intimately related to all that is of the nature of
the fire-beings, and the sylphs; Vishnu with all that is of the nature
of sylphs and undines; Shiva with all that is of the nature of undines
and gnomes. Generally speaking, when we go back to these more ancient
conceptions, we find everywhere the pictorial expressions for what
must be sought today as lying behind the secrets of nature.

Yesterday we studied the connection of this invisible folk with the
plant-world; today we have added their connection with the world of
the animals. Everywhere beings on this side of the threshold are
interlocked with those from beyond it; and beings from beyond the
threshold with those on this side. Only when one knows the living
inter-working of both these kinds of beings does one really understand
how the visible world unfolds. Knowledge of the super-sensible world
is indeed very, very necessary for man, because in the moment when he
passes through the gate of death he no longer has the sense-world
around him, but now the other world begins to be his world. At
his present stage of evolution man cannot find right access into the
other world unless he has recognized, in physical manifestations the
written characters which direct him over into this other world; if he
has not learned to read in the creatures of the earth, in the
creatures of the water, in the creatures of the air, and, indeed, in
the creatures of the light, the butterflies, what leads him to the
elemental beings which are our companions between death and a new
birth. What we see of these beings here between birth and death is, so
to speak, their crude, dense part. We only learn to recognize what
belongs to them as their super-sensible nature when, with insight and
understanding, we transfer ourselves into this super-sensible world.